


he doesn't look a thing like jesus

by ymirjotunn



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Disabled Character, Fallout AU, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 12:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4059472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Will offers the Devil his hand, and one time he offers him something more.</p><p>(Fallout AU, or, that AU about wastelander boyfriends with dieselpunk prosthetics.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	he doesn't look a thing like jesus

**Author's Note:**

> cws: casual ableist language used once, unsafe binding, injury (not very graphic), needles mentioned

I

The outskirts of Jacobstown are green as the wasteland goes, but not _that_ green. It’s still dust and debris and dirt, still Mojave, and by the time Kirin’s bounding back to the bunker, Will is trudging in tow and covered in crap.

Watching Kirin bounce on his hooves like that is somehow making him even more tired. He knows he should sponge off, that he’ll feel better if he does, but he barely has the energy to breathe. He collapses onto a cot instead, limbs sprawling. “I think there’s an inch-thick layer of dirt in my lungs,” he mumbles, more than a little accusatory. Kirin might run faster than a deathclaw, but with a companion, the accompanying dust clouds are something of a hazard.

“Don’t worry,” Kirin says, cheerful as ever, “you’ve only got, ah, give or take a half-inch caking the rest of you.” From the clinking of caps and the low thuds of scrap metal, Will guesses he’s dumping the contents of his pack to check out the haul.

“Grand,” he says, glancing at his arm. Ugh. _Caked_ is the right word. No wonder the joints have been a little stiff today. “You have any clean-ish rags?”

Kirin moves quickly, and he’s already at Will’s side, crouching to peer at his arm with an unsettling intensity. “I ought to,” he says at last. “Hold on.”

He’s still bounding when he stands up, like he’s genuinely excited to embark on a quest for rags, and Will groans a little, turning over in bed to flop his head down on the pillow. There is _no_ earthly reason _anyone_ should have that much energy after so much damn _walking_.

“Here we are.” Kirin’s back again, with a cloth in his hand and that easy smile of his. “Sit up, would you? I won’t be able to get at the shoulder joint if you’re lying on it.”

Will looks at him, incredulous. “What, you think--I was asking for me!”

Kirin shrugs. “You look tired, and I’m not. Simple logic. Up you get.”

Will doesn’t move, yawns instead, looking at Kirin with tired, mournful eyes. Kirin sighs, fondly, and offers his hand. Will pulls himself up into a sitting position, instantly slumping. His shoulders are humming with the deep bone-ache of fatigue; he might’ve overdone it a little.

“This won’t take very long. I’ll bring you another cloth for your face, and I’ve got water around somewhere,” Kirin says. His voice is so gentle it almost stings, twinges like the muscles in Will’s legs; he tries to ignore it, focuses instead on Kirin’s hands carefully working through each notch and joint in his arm.

* * *

II

Will isn’t afraid of heights. He’s afraid of falling.

And falling down a cliffside like this is definitely a concern. A fall like that would ruin his arm beyond repair, and probably break a few bones besides. He shifts on his feet, anxious.

“Behind.” Will spins before the words can resolve into their warning, muscles tense, and there’s Kirin with that _excruciatingly_ apologetic smile of his on his face.

“I don’t need to be condescended to,” he says, voice stiff.

“Not condescension, common courtesy. If someone came out of nowhere behind me, I don’t know about you, but I think they’d be on the ground pretty quick.” Kirin’s voice is light.

“Right,” Will says, with less bite this time. He stares down the cliffside, at the tangled brush and the knife-sharp rocks. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Ready to get down there?”

Will glances up at him, eyebrow raised. “Not particularly.”

“Oh, wallflower. It’s easy, see?” He demonstrates, and it is absurd. For all his size, for all the bulk of his greatcoat and gas mask pushed up on his head - almost comical, when it’s exposing his friendly face - he moves with an easy grace, lands perfectly on a rock a few feet away with a quiet clack of metal on stone.

“Easy, if you’re a goat,” Will says dryly. He wishes Kirin wasn’t wearing the greatcoat; he would have liked to see the way the joints carried the impact.

“Easy if you have a goat on your team.” Kirin grins up at him, extending a hand.

Will stares. “There’s no way this is safe.”

He’s still smiling. “We’ve talked about this. I’m fairly safe, as things in this world go.”

And Will knows it, and for some reason the knowledge makes him go taut every time. “Right. If I break my arm--”

“You won’t be hurt,” Kirin interrupts, and the smile has faded, replaced with ardent sincerity. “I promise you that.”

Will studies him for a moment. He’s so earnest that Will wants to shake him, demand to know where he came from. The Brotherhood isn’t like this. _Nobody_ is like this. Just Kirin, genuine even in his unorthodoxy. A faction all his own.

He takes a breath. “Right, then.” He reaches out, with his squishy hand, partly because it’d be a lot of strain on his arm and partly because skin-to-skin contact with Kirin is a sensation like aloe vera on sunburnt shoulders.

“Step lightly, this rock here,” Kirin says, indicating one next to him. “I’ve got you.” He does. His hand is in an iron grip around Will’s wrist and his eyes are fixed on Will, waiting, poised to catch.

Will jumps, his arm trembling, and lands, lands without falling. The air rushes out of his lungs and he looks up, catching his breath to say thanks.

“Next one,” Kirin says cheerfully, and points.

Will’s face goes sour. “You do this for _fun_ sometimes, don’t you?”

Kirin shrugs at him, watches carefully as he descends. “Neither fun nor chivalry is dead in this world, hard as it may be to believe, wallflower.”

Will is ready with a snappy retort when he catches Kirin’s eyes, so--so absurdly gentle.

Instead he shrugs, and tries to sound nonchalant when he says, “I believe you.”

* * *

III

The mantises come in packs around here, three or four at a time. They’re not hard to handle, at least, and Will doesn’t mind them - really, really he doesn’t - but they’re a pain in the ass and he just doesn’t want to have to waste his time on them. That’s all. That’s why he’s watching his radar like he’s in cazador territory.

He’s so intent on spotting any red dots that he barely notices when his Pip-Boy starts to crackle, at first tentative and then insistent. His eyes flick to the other set of red pixels. “Kirin,” he says, and glances up.

They are standing in front of a puddle of water. He doesn’t doubt that it’s irradiated; it’s got a dim, muddied glow to it that’s unmistakable.

“Huh,” Kirin says, with the sort of interest that already has Will a little worried. Shit, he wouldn’t drink it or anything, would he? He might be too curious for his own good, but he’s not _stupid_.

“Come on,” he says. “Back up a little bit.” The greatcoat looks snappy, sure, but it’s no radiation suit, and not even the Devil is immune to radiation. He thinks. He hasn’t asked yet.

Will glances around them. It’s rocky terrain here, steep and crumbly, and it was hard enough to make their way down into the valley for the sake of this pathway. He really doesn’t want to have to climb any cliffs today. Actually, he’s not sure he can climb any cliffs today. That was the whole idea of making it out through the pass, to avoid climbing. He’s not a freakin’ mountaineer.

But as far as he can tell, it’s the cliffside or the rads, and he only has so much RadAway with him and there’s no telling what the terrain ahead will be like, or the vault they’re headed for, for that matter, and it’s not like he’s _made_ of caps. Out here, away from his usual contacts, he doubts he’ll get the same kind of discounts he’s used to. Maybe there are cave systems they can take, to dodge this, though he hates caves, hates how claustrophobic they are and

He is very suddenly thrown over a shoulder.

He jerks on instinct, thrashing, and before he recognizes the musk-and-static smell he’s kneed his captor in the stomach and has his center of gravity halfway shifted to a better position for a chokehold. “ _Dammit_ , Kirin,” he grinds out, forcing himself to still. He doesn’t _think_ Kirin would drop him into a puddle of radioactive water, no matter how many times he was kneed in the stomach, but better safe than sorry.

Kirin walks with a bounce to his step normally, but as he hops over the puddle it’s even more exaggerated than usual. “I don’t need to be _carried_ ,” Will says, raising his voice, though he thinks he’s talking more to the back of Kirin’s greatcoat than anything.

And then his Pip-Boy quiets, and he’s reeling backwards with two feet planted in the dust. A hand snaps forward and he grabs it by the wrist for a fraction of a second, just to steady himself, and just as quickly it’s gone again.

He looks up, glare kindling, but Kirin isn’t looking at him, isn’t bothering to prepare a reply. He’s already stepped away, that faint smile of his present as always, his hands swinging as he walks on like nothing’s happened.

Will glances back at the pool, and forward again. He thinks about thanking him, and then he thinks better of it, and he keeps walking.

* * *

IV

“You’ve already been here, you said?” Will peers at the ground, littered with scrap. It’s not even _rusted_ ; Kirin had better have a good reason for leaving something this good behind. “Doesn’t look like you took too much.”

“Oh, no,” Kirin says. He seems cheerfully oblivious to Will’s skepticism, busy closing up behind them to keep any potential tagalongs out of the way. “I’ve been here a few times. It’s quite the motherlode, isn’t it? Still haven’t even explored the whole thing.”

“So…” Will glances back at him. “What? You’ve made multiple trips?”

“Sure have.” Kirin glances up, and nods at the door in front of Will. “That hallway should be clear. I’d say most of the scrap for my legs came out of this place, the first time I found it, but scrap hauls aren’t exactly the lightest of loads, and nobody cares enough about a no-name vault to make it through that pass--”

“Can’t blame them,” Will mumbles. He’s used to long treks, and his legs are still a little achey.

Kirin laughs, following him into the hallway. “To the left and down two floors. It’s nice, really, to have an ongoing project to come back to every now and then. Always undisturbed. I still haven’t been to the overseer’s hatch, believe it or not.”

“Rookie mistake,” Will says, only half-joking.

Kirin waves him off as they start down the stairs. “We’ll get to it today. Hardly a bad thing, you can share the profits.”

He snorts as they hit their floor. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind before I complain again about your scavenging habits.”

“Darn right you will,” Kirin says peacefully, and stops at a hulking door marked _Overseer’s Office_. Inside it looks like the vault standard, aside from some scattered scrap; it’s clear that Kirin’s already been here, and taken only what he was interested in.

The hatch, though, seems to have been saved for a special occasion. His gloved hands hover over the hatch’s security terminal’s keyboard as it extends, and then he stills. “Oh, drat. I don’t suppose you’d--”

“Afraid you’ll fry it?” Will moves to the terminal, scanning the pixels. It’s easy enough, and he steps back to grin at Kirin, maybe rub in his hacking skills a little bit, when the floor slides open.

Overseers’ hatches mean computers, spare parts, ammo, armor, stories, and Will expects all that; he does not expect a hunk of junk, hulking and unfamiliar, a ripple of lights where eyes would be as it lifts its arm point-blank to his face.

That...is probably some kind of gun, isn’t it.

“ _Non-combatants advised to leave the area_ ,” it rumbles, and Will has a split-second front-row view of the beginnings of a laser light show before a hand curls around his squishy wrist and yanks, so hard he falls on his ass and hands.

He still has no idea what’s going on when he looks up to see Kirin silhouetted against the crackle-flash of lightning and the eye-searing red of lasers, but he does know that his tailbone is killing him and it’s kind of hard to catch his breath and Kirin’s figure is right out of the murmured legends of the Mojave Devil, broad and alien and deadly.

The lights stop just as abruptly as Will’s heartbeat has, and Kirin turns, stepping away from the hatch to the awful metal-on-metal sound of the robot collapsing to the floor. He’s smiling as he shakes out his wrist, blows imaginary steam off his glove.

Will doesn’t know much about the New Canaanites’ Devil, but if he’s half as theatrical as Kirin, it’s hard to see where all the fear comes from.

“Sorry about that,” he says, bright, and holds out his other hand.

Will’s muscles are tight from shock, too tight to grab his hand. Kirin’s smile fades for a moment, and he glances through the doorframe. “Oh. No, it’s fine, it’s dead. I overloaded the power cells. Sorry, I--there’s been other Enclave tech in here, I just didn’t expect anything like sentry bots.”

“Sentry bots?” Will sucks in a breath and forces himself to relax, and takes Kirin’s hand, allows himself to be hauled to his feet. “That’s a new one.”

“Not new, just...uncommon, in these parts.” Kirin inspects him briefly, his hand lingering on Will’s for a moment until he seems satisfied enough to release him. “You weren’t hit, were you?”

“No. Were--”

“William, it’s just plasma,” Kirin says, fond, as if there is such a thing as _just_ plasma. “Help me strip this thing, would you? These things are good hauls.”

This isn’t the first time Will has wanted to interrogate his partner, and he’s sure it won’t be the last.

He catches Kirin glancing at him at least four times before they’ve dismantled the bot into manageable chunks, and decides that at least the feeling is probably mutual.

* * *

V

He shouldn’t have been wearing it so long. He _knows_ that. But there hasn’t been a chance to rest, let alone rest where Kirin’s curious eyes can’t find him, and that uneasiness - that wriggling, biting worm of a thought that he’s doing something he’ll regret - has been in the back of his mind all day.

It isn’t exactly a surprise when he passes out, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still his own damn fault.

++

“Where’s the--”, Kirin’s voice, alarmed, metal’s intact, squishy’s intact, lights dimmed, cot underneath him, back at the bunker? “--shoot, okay, there--”

“Hey,” he mumbles, like a croak. _Shit_ , but it’s hard to breathe. Like slogging through thorns. “How’s tricks.”

“ _William_ ,” Kirin says, with a sense of urgency that only just barely makes it through the fog of Will’s brain. “What were you--don’t ever do that again, you--here, water, come on, try to sit up.”

Will closes his eyes. The bleary warmth is nice, he thinks. So easy to just. Slip into it and rest. But then again, that’s probably heatstroke and oxygen deprivation talking, so he forces his eyes open again, sits up real slow. His whole body aches from the inside out and his head won’t stop spinning.

“Do you need a stimpak?” Will glances up at Kirin, still holding out the water bottle, eyes wide and anxious and startlingly genuine.

Will shakes his head in response, takes the water and takes a slow sip. He knows better than to gulp the whole thing down right off the bat, much as he’d like to. “Need to.” He coughs, wheezing, and his lungs are crackling with pain. Dammit. _Damn_ it. He can’t afford to puncture his lung again, he can’t--

Kirin’s hands are on his shoulders, big and warm and steady. “Hey, hey,” he murmurs. “Breathe. Just breathe.”

Will shakes his head. “Need it off.” Talking’s not a good idea, he decides, because now he’s wheezing again, knives in his lungs. Shit. _Shit_.

“Okay. Okay.” And he doesn’t understand, not completely, but he knows Will’s arm, knows the way the harness fits and clips, undoes the straps with deft hands and finds the catch.

When his arm slips into Kirin’s hands he flinches. It’s safe, he knows he’s safe, trusts that by now, but it’s habit. His arm belongs to him. Even the way Kirin handles it, like some fascinating Old World artifact, even then he _has_ Will, possesses him.

His arm is whitelisted to so few people he can count them on one hand with fingers to spare, but it hits him--even through his current haze--that Kirin has somehow ended up on that tiny whitelist.

That’s not terrifying at all. All right. He closes his eyes again, in hopes of shutting out the images. “Take off the rest of it,” he says. Consenting, out loud. If Kirin tries to kill him--he wouldn’t, would he?

Hopes not. No arm, no air, no options. Here is a leap of faith if there ever was one.

Kirin is unfastening his chestplate now. “Drink,” he says, and though there’s still that urgency in his voice it’s clear he’s steadying himself to steady Will in turn. “Next time you start feeling like you’re going to wilt, desert rose, let me know, and we can take a break.”

“‘s your,” Will begins, interrupting himself with a wheezy breath. “Dang _strides_. Three or four of mine, at least, how’m I supposed t’keep up.”

Kirin laughs. Sets aside the armor. He’s taking off the undershirt now and Will’s heartbeat has frozen in place. “You can have a ride next time,” he says. “Give yourself a break.”

The undershirt comes off and Kirin’s hands still.

Will looks ahead, not at Kirin, not at anything. “Need this off too,” he mutters. Every word is another stab to his chest.

“Okay,” Kirin says. His voice is unreadable and Will cannot move. He’s undoing each little strap, and Will swallows dry, can’t bring himself to drink again.

When the last strap is undone he breathes, and it twinges but he can _breathe_. “Thanks,” he says, wincing at the sting of air. “Broke a rib, I think. Got any stimpaks handy?” He doesn’t want to see what Kirin’s looking at. Not like he doesn’t already know.

“I do indeed,” he hears, and a stimpack is pressed into his hand. “How long have you been wearing that?”

He grimaces, plunging the needle into his ribcage. “You mean this time around or cumulatively?”

Kirin perches on the cot at Will’s feet, his legs dangling over the edge. Will can’t help it; he looks, and Kirin is looking at his face, not his chest.

“This time,” he replies. “None of my business otherwise unless you volunteer the information.”

Will swallows, dry again, and reaches for the water as the stimpak does its work, tingling and cool on his ribs. “Seventy hours, give or take,” he says at last. “And--twelve years, I think.”

Kirin nods at him when he looks up. “Okay,” he says. Just like that. None of the usual questions, none of the usual quips, none of the usual gun-fumbling. Just. Okay.

It’s silent for a moment and then Kirin gets up again, moves to Will’s side. “May I have permission to work out those pesky knots in your shoulders?” he asks, and Will nearly collapses into nervous relieved grateful laughter, though he doesn’t, just blinks hard, lets himself smile. Still has some self-control.

“Permission granted,” he says, and slips the binder off entirely.

If Kirin’s on the arm whitelist, he might as well be on all the other ones, too.

His hands are warm, a solid presence that buzzes under Will’s skin. His thumb slips along a red mark left by the hem of the binder, along what Will knows must be a yellowing bruise. That’s from last week.

“Seems like it’d restrict movement,” he says, voice settling soft in the thick silence of the bunker.

“It does, a bit. Doesn’t usually hurt me, though. Just when it’s too tight.”

“And when you leave it on for three days?” His hands are firm along the streaks of tight painful muscle in Will’s shoulder, but his voice is light and easy and gentle.

“Yeah,” Will says, wryly. “That’s, well. I should know better.”

“Why didn’t you take it off?” His hands are slowing, thumb circling one stubborn knot. Will can feel his muscles and bones humming.

“Are you pumping me with electricity?” he says, half-smiling, instead of answering the question.

“Just a bit. It’s called electrostimulation. Like a reset button for your muscles.” It does feel good. “It’s safe. Wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”

They sit like that for a minute. Will realizes, abruptly, that he’s not wearing his arm or armor or binder and an attractive deadly Devil is giving him an electric back massage and he’s _comfortable_.

He doesn’t give the revelation enough space to really scare him, relaxes back into Kirin’s hands instead. Fear is cold and shaky; Kirin is warm and steady. It’s no contest.

“Hold on,” Will says, and Kirin’s hands still. One of his thumbs has been brushing right over one of the marks for a few minutes now, like Kirin is trying to erase it through touch, and Will knows, acutely, that he is making that _face_ , his mouth all tight with focused, worried eyes. “Stop making that face. It’s fine.”

“What face?” There is, at least, humor in his voice. “How’s your rib?”

“I mean it,” Will says, twisting just slightly. It twinges in his ribs and he winces, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before. “You’re--you are! You’re making that face. Stop.”

At least his mouth is curled into a bit of a smile, but he still looks so frustratingly--like he wants to ask _questions_ , like he wants to fold himself up against Will and smooth out all his wrinkles, like he wants to hold Will so gently it echoes in his bones. “This is my regular face. I’m not doing anything.”

“You are,” Will says, exhaling. “You’re worried.”

Kirin is quiet for a moment. There’s just the sound of the fan on the other side of the room, chugging away, and the two of them breathing, and the soft _sshs_ of skin on skin.

Finally Will hears him wet his lips. “Am I allowed to be?”

That’s a new one.

Will lets himself relax, undoes the muscles in his back one by one, easier with Kirin’s hands there. “Well,” he says. “I don’t think I can really stop you.”

“Would you want to stop me, if you could?”

He sounds so damn _earnest_. Will swallows. “No,” he says, at last. “No, I don’t think so.”

  


* * *

  


Kirin’s hands are steady as his fingers run along the underside of his ribs, following stories of ancient bruises and long-healed broken bones, tracing the white lines of combat scars, asking his body questions that he knows Will won’t answer aloud.

It should offend him, Will thinks. He should do something about it.

But he doesn’t. Just...lets Kirin’s soft shocks slide down his spine, the buzz curling around each bump of each vertebra. Lets a palm lie flat on the small of his back, humming with silent conversation. Lets warm lips press against the join of his shoulder and his neck, softer than a breath of air.

“All right?” Kirin says, so quiet Will thinks he might have invented it, but when he turns his head he sees Kirin watching him, eyes dark and focused, meeting his own.

It’s just another question, in the end. More questions that Will can’t or doesn’t want to answer aloud. But tonight, it seems, Kirin is drinking in all the answers he needs, all the answers Will can give, just from the shape of Will’s presence; he might as well let the trend continue.

Will shifts, so he doesn’t have to twist his healing rib. Kirin’s legs are off and he’s lying up against the wall, and Will kneels, straddling the space where his legs might be, leans forward, puts his hand on the wall and kisses him.

It’s a languid kiss, liquid in the way Will melts against Kirin, in the way his hand slides to rest on a pillow. By the time warm hands wrap around his back, holding him steady, pulling him closer, Will’s tasted him, cool iron and agave and the sharpness of static, and it warms his whole body with its tang.

When they break apart, Kirin’s still holding him, watching him with an expression Will can’t quite read, and Will ducks his head to the side to hide his face.

“I think we should get some rest,” Kirin says at last. His hands are stroking the small of Will’s back again, and it’s nice, nice in a way Will can’t remember letting himself have. “Your rib.”

“Yeah,” he says, and exhales. “Yeah, I--yeah. Thanks.” 

He isn’t sure what he’s thanking him for, but he knows he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> ur fave is trans and disabled; i don't make the rules, i just write about 'em 8D
> 
> thanks much to the following enablers: lucy, sam, chai, emma, and luna. y'all are wonderful and i can't tell you how much i appreciate your support and assistance and enthusiasm. <3


End file.
